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THE NEW YORKER, MAY 19, 2014
would be accommodated at all district
schools, but the programs hadn't yet
been developed. Families without cars
asked how their children would get to
better schools across town, since the plan
didn't provide transportation. Although
Anderson initially announced that char-
ters would take over a number of K-8
schools, it turned out that the charters
agreed to serve only K-4; children in
grades five through eight would have to
go elsewhere.
The biggest concern was children's
safety, particularly in the South Ward,
where murders had risen by seventy per
cent in the past four years. The closest al-
ternative to Hawthorne Avenue School,
which was losing its fifth through eighth
grades, was George Washington Carver,
half a mile to the south. Jacqueline Ed-
ward and Denise Perry-Miller, who have
children at Hawthorne, knew the dan-
gers well. Gangs had tried to take over
their homes, tearing out pipes, sinks, and
boilers, and stealing their belongings,
forcing both families temporarily into
homeless shelters. Edward and Perry-
Miller took me on a walk along the route
to Carver. We crossed a busy thor-
oughfare over I-78, then turned onto
Wolcott Terrace, a street with several
boarded-up houses used by drug dealers.
Edward said, "I will not allow my
daughter to make this walk. My twenty-
eight-year-old started off in a gang, and
we fought to get him out. My twenty-
two-year-old has a lot of anger issues
because Daddy wasn't there. I just re-
fuse to see another generation go that
way." Then, as if addressing Anderson,
she asked, "Can you guarantee me my
daughter's safety? . . . Did you think
this through with our children in mind
or did you just do this to try to force us
to leave because big business wants us
out of here?" Anderson told me that
she will address all safety issues, either
with school buses or by accommodating
middle-schoolers in their neighbor-
hoods. Hawthorne parents said they had
not heard this.
Shavar Jeffries, Baraka's thirty-nine-
year-old opponent in the mayoral
election, to be held May 13th, could have
been a key ally for Anderson. He was a
member of the school advisory board
when she arrived, and supported most of
her agenda, including the expansion of
charter schools and reforms in district
schools. But he was also a strong oppo-
nent of state control, and he challenged
her publicly a number of times, saying she
had not shared enough information with
the board. He was among those who
voted against her 2013 budget. After-
ward, according to former aides to An-
derson, she told potential donors to his
campaign that he was not a real reformer,
citing his vote against her budget. (An-
derson denied saying this.)
He believed that public schools and
charter schools could work in tandem
and that education reform could take
hold in Newark, but only if residents'
voices were heard and respected. "Our
superintendent, unfortunately, has in re-
cent times run roughshod over our com-
munity's fundamental interests," he said
in a campaign speech on education. "I
say this as a father of two: no one is ever
going to do anything that's going to
affect my babies without coming to talk
to me."
The day after the release of One
Newark, Ras Baraka held a press con-
ference in front of Weequahic High
School, denouncing the plan as "a dis-
mantling of public education.... It
needs to be halted." Enrollment at
Weequahic was plummeting, and An-
derson intended to phase it out over
three years, moving a new all-girls and
an all-boys academy into the building.
Weequahic was the alma mater of the
long-decamped Jewish community and
of thousands of Newark community
leaders, politicians, athletes, and teach-
ers, who were protesting vociferously.
Photos and video footage of Baraka in
front of the building, which has a fa-
mous W.P.A. mural---the "Enlighten-
ment of Man"---appeared in newspa-
pers, on television, and on blogs and
Web sites. "You could feel a shift in
the momentum on that day," Bruno
Tedeschi, a political strategist, told me.
"I said to myself, 'He's trying to turn
the election into a referendum on her.
From this point on, it doesn't matter
what she does.' She's a symbol of Chris-
tie and the power structure that refuses
to give Newark what it feels rightly en-
titled to." Civic leaders and clergy,
whom she expected to endorse the
plan, backed off. Several weeks later,
Anderson agreed to keep Weequahic
intact for at least two years.
Christie met with Anderson in
"There's always one annoying piece left over."
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